lightning, Atahuallpa broke his journey at
Cajamarca, 600 miles northwest of Cuzco. He
ordered the town evacuated, sent gifts to
Pizarro, and waited at nearby thermal baths,
attended by his wives and nobles. Tents of
his army blanketed surrounding hills, al
though his best troops were pillaging Cuzco.
He had consulted the oracles, and they had
reassured him of his invincibility.
Meanwhile, the citizens of faraway Cuzco
had found new hope. They thought Pizarro
was coming in answer to their prayers to the
supreme being, Viracocha, for deliverance
from Atahuallpa. After the creation, Vira
cocha had set off across the Pacific walking
on the waters. People believed he would re
appear in times of crises. Surely the bearded
saviors were sent by Viracocha!
Ironically, the white man inherited the
god's name. I get an eerie feeling when In
dians in remote villages address me with that
ghostly title.
FROM THE HEIGHTS where Pizarro first
sighted Atahuallpa's camp, I looked down
one frosty morning on the green fields of
Cajamarca, where scalding overflow from
the Inca's Bath still wends through lush grass
and fills the valley with vapor. As the sun
rose, it lifted the mist from the stage of one of
the most dramatic confrontations in history.
Pizarro sent an interpreter and 15 riders
under Hernando de Soto (who later dis
covered the Mississippi River) to offer his ser
vices in arms and to ask the emperor to dine
next day. The seated Inca offered ceremonial
chicha, accepted the invitation, and told his
guests to occupy the town plaza. Before leav
ing, De Soto galloped up to Atahuallpa and
reared his charger. Nobles flinched. The Inca
sat unmoved on the royal stool.
That night Atahuallpa executed the cow
ardly nobles. The Spaniards prayed till dawn.
Pizarro set the trap that the Inca had un
wittingly provided him. In the great triangu
lar plaza, with an entrance at its apex, he laid
an ambush. He hid his forces inside buildings
that had doorways, high enough for horse and
rider, facing into the walled plaza.
On Saturday, November 16, 1532, the Inca
delayed his social call until sundown, sup
posing horses to be of no use after dark, and
bemused by reports that the bearded men
were hiding in fear. Then he capped his spate
of bad decisions by going unarmed to sup
and spend the night in town.
Preceded by hundreds of sweepers, whose
cries of triumph, said one of the conquis
tadors, "sounded like the songs of hell," the
Inca entered the plaza on his golden litter, at
tended by richly dressed nobles and "five or
six thousand menials." The only Spaniard in
sight, a Dominican friar, came forward with
a prayer book and read aloud. Atahuallpa ex
amined the book, but as it failed to talk to
him he threw it down.
Suddenly bugles blew, guns belched thun
der, and the old Spanish war cry rang out,
"Santiago [St. James]! And at them!"
Hoofed monsters charged out of trape
zoidal doorways and trampled Indian flesh.
Toledo blades turned crimson. Panic seized
the courtiers; in their surge to escape, they
demolished a chunk of the plaza wall.
Then, for the second time that year, a gold
en litter capsized and a Son of the Sun fell to
earth. Within minutes Pizarro had plucked
the Inca from the midst of his armies without
the loss of a man. Spaniards pursued Indians
into the night, killing, they reported, more
than 6,000.
HOW A FEW SPANISH CAVALRYMEN
could demoralize and crush an Inca army
I learned for myself in the mountains south
of Cuzco, where I became an isolated foot sol
dier amid rampaging riders in a deadly ritual
war performed yearly since Inca times.
It happened when Sue and I called on a
peasant friend, Luis Choqueneira, whose
stone hut perches at 13,000 feet on the edge of
the Apurimac River gorge in Canas Province.
Luis and his scattered neighbors stem from
aggressive ancestors; some resisted Pachacuti,
and others inspired bloody neo-Incan revolts
that spread through the Andes in 1780.
"We'll show you how tough we are," boast
ed Luis. "We're going to fight with whips and
slings and bolas like this." He whirled a cord
with three weights attached and sent it spin
ning. It tangled in the legs and curled-up tail
of a yellow-eyed Inca dog, which tumbled
over, yipping. "Some of us will get killed, try
ing to capture the enemy's girls."
"The enemy? Who's the enemy?"
"Well... our friends of Chumbivilcas Prov
ince become enemies for a day. When they're
short of men, we lend them some of ours."
In a flurry of midsummer snow we climbed
Tocto, a nearby summit 900 feet higher than
the Matterhorn, to join hundreds of Canas
peasants picnicking in embroidered woolens
The Lost Empire of the Incas
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